Winnebago County assessments show property values down for fifth straight year

Thursday

Aug 14, 2014 at 4:44 PMAug 14, 2014 at 4:46 PM

By Alex GaryRockford Register Star

ROCKFORD — The Winnebago County Supervisor of Assessments office mailed tax notices last week, starting the countdown for residents to challenge the assessment that helps determine what they will pay in 2015 property taxes.

Regardless of whether you challenge your assessment, your tax bill will likely be lower next year. For the third straight year, Winnebago County is likely to collect less in property taxes in 2015. It’s a small respite for property owners who for years watched their home values drop significantly without seeing much of a break on their property tax bills.

“You’re telling me my tax bill is going to go down, and I’m not going to believe it until I see it,” said James Novak, founder of the Concerned Citizens for Rockford watchdog group. “There are people who have lost thousands in their homes and are still being taxed right out of them.”

Notices were mailed to about 15,000 people, said Tom Walsh, the county supervisor of assessments. The county has about 123,000 individual property tax parcels.

If you didn’t get a notice, it means the county did not raise or lower your assessment. However, your assessment still will change based on the equalization factor of your township, which varies based on property sale prices in each township. Twelve of the 14 Winnebago County townships had a negative equalization factor. The equalization factors in Owen and Winnebago townships are 1.00, which means a home there valued at $100,000 in 2013 is worth the same in 2014, unless the property owner got a notice saying otherwise.

The state requires the use of equalization factors to make sure property values in one area aren’t out of line — disproportionately higher or lower — than other areas of a county and the state.

For example, if you own a home in Rockford Township valued at $100,000 in 2013, once the equalization factor of 0.9413 is applied, your house will be taxed on a fair market value of $94,130.

Of course, if you believe your home is worth less, or in the rare cases more, than what the county believes, you now have until end of business Sept. 10 to file an assessment complaint form. You do not have to have received a tax notice to file a complaint. Last year, 6,131 property owners filed complaints. The board of review granted at least some reduction in 4,197 cases — about 68.5 percent — further lowering equalized assessed values by $36.5 million.

According to Walsh’s office, the total value of all property in Winnebago County declined at least 3.9 percent this year. In 2013, after the county board of review finished its work, all property had an equalized assessed value of $4.46 billion. Equalized assessed value is roughly one-third of a property’s fair market value. This year, assessors set the initial assessments at $4.28 billion.

This is the fifth straight year property values have declined in the county since peaking in 2009. Even as property values fell, the majority of the taxing bodies in the county continued to ask for tax increases through their property tax levies. That meant that even as values declined in 2009, 2010 and 2011, the property taxes collected by the county increased from $446.5 million in 2009 to $465.2 million by 2011.

In 2012, though, the Rockford School District lowered its tax levy by $15.7 million after a five-year temporary tax increase ran out. The Rockford School District is by far the largest property tax recipient in the county and the lower levy caused tax collections in 2013 to fall to $453.9 million.

This year’s tax collections are down an additional 1 percent. The second round of tax payments are due Sept. 5.

Tax collections in 2015 could fall even more significantly because several of the Rockford School District funds — including the education fund, operations and maintenance, and special education — hit their statutory tax caps. This year the district’s overall tax rate reached $7.23. Of that, $5.70 was in the funds that have hit their maximums and can’t go any higher unless voters approve increases through a referendum.

What that means is that even as property values continue to fall, the district’s capped rates can’t increase. So the amount of money it will collect from taxpayers will decline.

The Harlem and Durand school districts also are nearing their maximum rates in capped funds.

Winnebago County Clerk Margie Mullins said: “I certainly would think tax bills will go down the way things are looking, and that’s a good thing for people struggling with their bills.”

Officials in Boone and Ogle counties have not yet set dates when property tax assessments will be mailed.